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Aims and Scope

The Polish Political Science Yearbook (PPSY) is an international, open access, and peer-reviewed journal publishing high-standard research on political science, international relations, and public policy. The PPSY serves as a forum for academic scholars and professionals to support the latest analytical and methodological advancements and promote current work in political science and Polish studies.

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In article, author pay attention to the potential and scope of the impact of new forms of communication on the form and content of theoretical research. In principle, such an effect can be seen in two related, but different dimensions of analysis. In the first place it concerns the scope of the political theory, which is enriched with new areas and issues revealing previously unknown or not perceived problems, phenomena and processes that guide the interests of contemporary researchers. On the other hand, global mass communication techniques significantly shape, and thus change the existing forms of theoretical discourse and the structure of the theory itself. These changes in the perspective of plurality and decentralization of theoretical discourse subjects, as well as the emergence of new research areas which aspire to the status of scientific discipline, gain innovative importance especially from the point of view of the attempts to achieve meta-synthetic accumulation of social knowledge.

Establishing good law has been an old dream of humanity. Back in ancient times leaders such as Hammurabi, Solon, and especially Justinian the Great, and many others, while attempting to codify and reform the law, were driven by the ideal of “good law”. ! is same idea inspired Montesquieu in his De l’esprit des lois (“! e Spirit of the Laws”). Monumental legal acts in Napoleon’s times or the time of German unifi cation, as well as copying these acts into the legal systems of the countries of the Far East, for example, Japan, serve as additional examples on how tempted leaders have been able to implement the idea of “good law”, which, quite frequently, is directly stated in the preamble to leading legal acts.

Karachay-Circassia, is very small both in the territorial and demographic aspect and is widely considered as one of the most politically unstable state-subjects of the Russian Federation. This instability is implied by a combination of many factors occurring against a relatively stable historical and cultural background. This background consists of: multiethnicity, colonization and sovietization, deportations, migrations, ethnic segmentation of the society, ethno-clanishness, ethnic and territorial conflicts and the geopolitical situation. The latter has often decomposed the natural development of nation-creating and state-creating processes. Moreover, it has also been the main cause of numerous tragedies of the local populace which sometimes has put its very biological existence under threat.

Ideologies are fundamental in categorising, defi ning and evaluating political reality. They also condition the aims inspiring actors on the political stage, constituting, as it were, a bond providing parties, social groups and societies with sets of values and convictions that unite them. We are now witnessing an evolution of traditional political ideologies, triggered off by new challenges, the changing world order, processes of globalisation and Europeanisation, while political parties in Europe seem to resign from clear–cut ideological identifi cations, opting for the pragmatic, thus maximising their voting scores and, subsequently, efficient management of the public sphere. Politics is ever more frequently perceived as a mere struggle for power, political ideas are seen as slogans serving the purpose of winning votes or popular support, while ideologies have become “goods on display”, hiding deeper meanings of political life. Yet, at the same time ideologies still retain their purpose, infl uencing the functioning of political parties or political communities.

It is widely recognised, that the status of any scientific discipline is vitally determined by its methodological autonomy. These are theoretical rules on the acquirement of information about a given reality, its definitions, systematization, clarification and interpretation. It is a specific challenge with regards to political science, which stems from the subject of knowledge, the politics. This realm is known to humanity from the onset of structure-shaping and institutionalisation of social life, and since ancient times attempts at its theoretical clarification are being undertaken. It has taken an important place within philosophical thought, historical and legal analysis. This reality led to political science becoming an integrating platform for knowledge from areas of political and social philosophy, law, economy, history. This integration has made cognitive challenges superficial and as a consequence raised such questions as: is political science a scientific discipline? The unfavourable image was revealed as it was included in broad process of political education of society.

Male politicians are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that women have great power. Girls account for 50% of the population of school students. Women seem to be much better at handling the financial crisis than men. The recession primarily aftected the masculine part of business – widespread layoffs hit typically male industries, such as cars, tobacco, financial services. In the U.S., men account for 80% of people who lost jobs as the result of the recent crisis. Moreover, it is women that make most decisions relating to household expenses. They are also more inclined to save up for future. They typically spend money on things like education, healthcare, food and cosmetics. They also invest in their children’s future. At present, women have about $10.5 trillion at their disposal, while men have approximately $23.4 trillion. However, this disproportion is still getting smaller. The past decade saw the distance between these two worlds constantly diminish. Women control $12 trillion out of $18.4 trillion spent by consumers every year. Moreover, the increasing number of working women – as Michael J. Silverstein points – means that their income is increasing. 

Last decades of the past century, as well as the current one, may be characterized by the increase of political role of the movements that are called “the protest parties.” Scholars, journalists and politicians put a lot of attention to that phenomenon. However, it is focused just on selected elements of the problem. Beginning from the 1980s European public opinion may observe the rise and development of groups of ecologists. The unexpected electoral success of the new type of party is called “the New Populism.” Back in the 1990s it caused many concerns, opinions and discussions on the issue whether such parties are harmful for modern and stabilized western European democracies. At the turn of the century the political scene has been dominated by new forms of activity, which are the anti-globalization and alternative globalization movements.

The conviction that particularly political sphere abounds in permanent paradoxes, that they constitute its inherent attributes, was already familiar to political philosophy classics, although they expressed them in different ways. “The paradoxical mix of order and chaos compelled the Greeks to seek out more creative, inclusive and reflexive modes of thought and action”. One of them, Socrates, talked about “the true political craft”, that is a rejection of politics, and at the same time, its admission. The paradoxical features of politics that arise from human nature were examined by Thomas Hobbes. Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed the paradoxes that underlie the act of free will declaration. Carl Schmitt paid attention to the internal paradox of democracy, pointing out that despite the conditions of declared citizens equality, the policy is dominated by inequalities deriving from other spheres, particularly economy.

Introductorily, it should be observed that the discussed problem’s significance is increasingly pressing as our interest drifts towards societies dominated by great, universalizing religions Islam being only one of them. From the above, a question arises of whether the notions of religion and democracy, as mentioned in the title, are reconcilable within a single order in the first place. In his deliberations, Bohdan Chwedeńczyk inclines to the view that three types of relations may be distinguished in this respect: religion favours democracy; is indifferent to democracy; or is harmful to democracy. The discussion of the above opinion has, respectively, developed threefold. In one point of view, religion is by nature contradictory to the democratic order, it is in a sense its direct opposite. In other words, we face a choice of opting either for religion or democracy. Supporters of an alternative viewpoint claim that in the long run, a democratic system is not viable without the basis of notions such as religion, and therefore religion does play a vital part in the social order. It serves members of the public by satisfying those of their needs that do not belong to the scope of duties performed by the state and its institutions. Finally, the third approach basically acknowledges the fact that no definitive claims can be made as to the possibility of agreement between religion and democracy. I must admit that the latter is closest to my personal stance in this respect. Naturally, through careful selection of examples, arguments to support the first or the second of the mentioned opinions can be easily produced. There have been numerous examples of academic and journalistic articles advocating one of the clear-cut standpoints, which seem not to leave much room for discussion. However, the issue becomes far more multifarious when taking into account the complexity of religious and political issues analysed in both theoretical and practical perspective.

The article presents the essence of the sustainability concept in the light of literature, including history and development in later years, and definitions published by scientists from Poland and the rest of the world. This publication also presents a study on the rapid growth in popularity of this concept in the world and examples of implementation of sustainability in companies.

ORIGINS, CURRICULUM ASSUMPTIONS AND ACTIVITIES OF THE PERESTROIKA MOVEMENT IN AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE

Model of methodological and theoretical pluralism, developed after the behavioral revolution, allows different methods and purposes of approach in research of political spheres of social life. For many years, it seemed that the current consensus is not threatened, that the acceptance of the status quo is widespread. As it turned out, however, post-behavioral order and peace were hiding under the surface of old conflicts and contradictions, and generated new ones. Somewhat like 100 years ago, at the beginning of the new century, they flowed on the surface – colliding with each other – as completely different visions of policy research, based on a different meaning of objectivity and truth and the role that the gained knowledge plays in the society.
In October 2000, to a dozen American political scientists and publishers of professional magazines there was sent an e-mail, signed “Mr. Perestroika”, containing harsh criticism of the system of forces existing in the American political science, under which there is a strong dominance of representatives of science-oriented mathematical modeling and quantitative methods, and representatives of other approaches are being discriminated against. This letter, commonly called the “Perestroika Manifesto”, has rapidly spread in the network, gaining a few hundred followers within a few weeks. It became the nucleus of an informal Perestroika Movement, which brought together a larger group of political scientists dissatisfied with the current model of discipline.
They performed against the domination of investigator-driven assumptions of logical positivism and radical behaviorism, based on the assumption that it is possible to predict the political behavior on the basis of the theories of rationality. They also questioned focusing on discovering universal, independent of context, truths about politics, based on testing causal hypotheses with regard to the behavior of political actors and the quest to build a general theory. Th is results in their opinion that there is the marginalization of other studies aimed at clarifying and resolving specifi c issues and, on the other hand, the need of search for a more explicit link between theory and practice.
Supporters of the Perestroika Movement do not reject entirely quantitative methods, only tend to criticize their absolutizing character, involving the complete discrediting of approaches which are not referring to the quantifi cation of data or treating this type of treatment only as a complementary knowledge considerations based on normative narrative. Th erefore, they generally tend to the concept of methodological triangulation, in which quantitative techniques may complement and partially be a form of verifi cation of qualitative methods in various research issues, of course, if you can combine both types of approaches.
Th ey are clearly in favor of the primacy of the essence of research method. From this point of view, based on compliance with the applicable rules of methodological research, they do not have to be in this respect particularly innovative, hyper-precise or mathematicised. Th ey should, however, contain a well-constructed argumentation, allowing reliably resolve important issues. Th e result should be to restore compounds research and theoretical knowledge with the real problems of political life, moving away from the extreme containment and academic character towards the relationship of knowledge about politics of social practice.

Artykuł poświęcony jest kategorii post- -prawdy i jej wątpliwemu znaczeniu dla badań politologicznych w ogóle i dla teorii polityki w szczególności. W tekście przedstawiono liczne zastrzeżenia pod adresem koncepcji post-prawdy, przede wszystkim definicyjne i teoretyczne, jak również starano się wykazać, iż koncept post- -prawdy opiera się na rozumowaniu potocznym i nie spełnia kryteriów naukowości, co wyklucza post-prawdę z katalogu kategorii naukowych. Rozważania osadzono w szerszym kontekście teoriopolitycznym i właśnie na potrzeby teorii polityki wyprowadzono odpowiednie wnioski.

The article aims at restoring local self-government as a research problem of political theory. In contemporary political science literature, local self-government is not treated as one of its normal, standard research problems. The main obstacle of its ambiguous position within political theory is, as I argue, the forced and imposed apolitical character of local self-government considered as a part of public administration. Despite some degree of organizational, especially institutional and legal, self-determination, the local self-government is not a political, i.e. sovereign entity. However, its non-sovereign status, which is legally established, does not exclude the existence of political potency in it.

The cybersecurity issue discussed in the paper is seen from the perspective of political science with the indication that the subject under discussion concerns the multifaceted nature of the state’s actions, which consists of political, economic, social, and cultural factors. At the same time, the work also intends to prove that cybersecurity is not only a domain of technology because it is the mentioned aspects that shape the conditions of stable development of the state and its citizens in a space dominated by cyber technology in a much more decisive way. Given the growing role of cybertechnology in almost all areas of human life, its importance also forces and inspires political science to question the shape and model of modern policy, which is significantly evolving under the influence of new technologies. On the one hand, emerging cyber threats reveal the weakness of the state and the dependence of state institutions on cybertechnologies, but on the other hand, existing cyber incidents may also motivate many governments to take action to increase the level of cybersecurity.

In this paper I would like to present an interpretation of David Hume’s political theory. Therefore, a method of investigation can be recognized as hermeneutical one. Main threads which I would like to emphasize are: concept of stability, distribution of power, role of an opinion in political dimension and a conservative attitude toward a change. I claim that important lesson for political science can be taken from his theory. Generally speaking, this lesson consists in refusing the so-called political regime fetishism and focusing on the relevant issues of social stability. These issues are strictly determined by the opinions, hence the proper subject-matter of political science is identified with them. As one of the conclusions I propose a thesis that politics is, and ought only to be slave of opinions, what is an allusion to a famous sentence from A Treatise of Human Nature that the reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.

The purpose of this article is to answer some key questions about one of the most important frameworks in the research of the policy process – Advocacy Coalitions Framework created by Paul Sabatier. Within the article beliefs were defined as an essential element within the political system, which is responsible for the functioning of the advocacy coalitions operating in individual political subsystems. Secondly, as it had been shown in previous research, there are restrictions on significant policy changes, which usually do not occur over the political cycle of 10 – 15 years. Over the last 25 years, the ACF – framework that in the words of the author is close to the status of theory – passed a few serious revisions in response to concerns from other researchers

This paper seeks to improve comprehension of issues related to political stability. The primary elucidating tool employed is the multifaceted approach to political stability. This is the idea that similar political stability mechanisms can be observed in many different political contexts. These phenomena consist of conspicuous discrepancies between the stability of dimensions or layers of the political sphere. The lack of congruency between political stability and economic stability, differences between the stability of government authorities and the stability of the whole political system, or the gap between social and political stability are examples that are not difficult to grasp in ordinary observations of political appearances. The main task of this paper is to explain and elaborate on the reasons behind this phenomenon. As an additional value, some suggestions of how our findings can change the view on the method of research on political stability are to be found. The outcome of our investigation can be applied to comparative politics, constitutional studies, and political system analysis. The paper is particularly significant for empirically oriented political theory.